This invention is directed toward a combined pick and stringed instrument tuner and more particularly toward a tuning device which is small enough to be easily held in one's hand and which includes a pick at the end thereof so that the device may be used for playing a stringed instrument such as a guitar.
Numerous electronic tuning devices have been proposed over the years for aiding a musician in the tuning of a stringed instrument such as guitar. There are basically two types of tuning devices which have been proposed. The first is a stroboscopic tuner which basically includes a light source which turns on and off at a predetermined and preset frequency which frequency is equal to the frequency of the string to be tuned. When the strobe light is shined on the string, a well-known stroboscopic movement is observed and as the string is brought into tune, movement stops and the string appears to be standing still. One such device is shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,061,071.
The second type of electronic tuning devices which has been proposed includes a microphone or pickup for converting the sound produced by a vibrating string into an electronic signal. This signal is compared with a signal from a frequency generator which is selected to be equal to the frequency of the string being tuned. These various devices include numerous different techniques for indicating when the comparator senses that the frequency of the string is equal to the frequency of the frequency generator. Examples of this type of tuning device are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,766,818; 3,861,266 and 3,901,120.
While some of these devices are somewhat useful in tuning a stringed instrument, they all suffer from primarily the same problem. All of the prior proposed devices known to Applicant are difficult or at least inconvenient to operate particularly when a musician merely wishes to check the tuning of his instrument such as in between numbers. This is due to the fact that the musician utilizing the device must stop what he is doing, set the controls on the tuning device, adjust his instrument and then replace the strobe or microphone or the like.